Monday, May 6, 2013

[Dr. Reagan's note: Jonathan Cahn is the author of the best selling book, The Harbinger. This article contains a speech he made at the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast on January 21, 2013. This presentation placed him on the cutting edge of prophetic voices that are warning America of its impending doom if it does not repent of its grievous sins. Jonathan Cahn is the spiritual leader of the Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, New Jersey. This article contains only a portion of Rabbi Cahn's presentation and is reprinted here in edited form by his permission.]

Members of the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast Committee, Senators, Members of Congress, Governors and government representatives, Ambassadors and delegates from other nations, ministers and people of God, friends, and media.

We are gathered here in Washington, D.C., America's capital city, on January 21, 2013, the morning of the Presidential Inauguration, with one agenda and one purpose, to come before the Lord and in His presence to seek His face and pray for His blessing, His will, and His purposes to be accomplished for this nation, for its government, for its leaders, for its president, and for its people. And it is fitting that we do this on this day which more than any other represents the future of our nation. We are here to inaugurate God's own purposes.

We've come here from every part of this land and from every background and persuasion to stand before the Almighty, who transcends politics, movements, and men, and before whom kings and kingdoms rise and fall. Presidents change, political parties come, from ages past, and go, and nations ascend and descend, but we come before Him who changes not but who remains the same yesterday, today and forever. We come before Him, before whom men and women, kings and prophets, peoples and nations have come to seek His face in troubled times. We come to pray for America.

But how do we do that? How do we pray for America? Do we pray for riches, for power, for the success of our national agendas? The Scripture tells us that God hears the prayers of His people, but that we must pray according to His will. If a man has a terminal disease, we don't pray for an increase in wealth, we pray for healing. And if a city lies in danger of destruction, we don't speak flowery words, we sound the alarm. We pray for blessing. But true blessing only comes in the will of God. So we must pray according to that will.

And we must not be afraid to speak the truth. We must give voice what must be spoken. We must sound the alarm that must be sounded. We must address what must be addressed. And so this message will not be politically correct, nor will it be political. It will be biblical. It will be true. And wherever it falls, so be it. I will not hold back. And if I offend you, I apologize, but I cannot apologize for offending you. Without truth, there is no love. On a day that so embodies the future course of our nation, it is critical that we must both pray and speak what is true.

The Tragedy of Ancient Israel

In ancient times, there was a nation known as the kingdom of Israel. It had been founded on God's word, dedicated to His will, and consecrated to His purposes. And God blessed it with prosperity, power, security, peace and a place at the head of nations. But the people of Israel made a fatal mistake. In the midst of their blessings, they turned away from God. They began to remove Him from their lives. Step by step they ruled Him out of their culture, out of their government, out of their economy, out of their public square, out of the instruction and lives of their children. They ruled Him out of the kingdom. They would still at times invoke His name, but it was increasingly hollow and meaningless. They had made themselves strangers to the God of their fathers and their foundation.

And as God was driven from their lives, they brought in foreign gods and idols to replace Him, gods of sensuality, materialism, violence, idols of wealth, carnality, and sexual promiscuity. They abandoned the ways of God, the laws of God, the standards of God for immorality. As the prophets cried out, they now called evil, "good," and good, "evil." What they once knew to be immoral, they now celebrated, and what they once knew to be right, they now warred against. It was a culture turned in upon itself, a civilization at war against the very foundation on which it had been established.

And the righteous, who simply remained true to what they had once all known to be true, were now vilified, marginalized, mocked, labeled "intolerant," increasingly banned from the public square, and, ultimately, persecuted. The nation's culture grew increasingly vulgar, godless, and darkened. They now defiled, ridiculed, and blasphemed the name of God.

It was as if a spiritual amnesia had overtaken the kingdom, as if they had never known God or His ways. And they descended into the darkest sins of the nations which surrounded them. They offered up their children as sacrifices to the gods, on the altars and fires of Baal and Molech. And they now stood under the shadow of judgment and in danger of destruction.

And God called out to them, to return, to come back, to be saved from destruction. He sent to them seers and prophets to wake them up, to call them back. But they wouldn't listen. They mocked the prophets and persecuted them. And they hardened their hearts. And finally something happened that brought them into the first stage of judgment.

In the second segment of Jonathan Cahn's speech he made at the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast, he will address the tragedy of modern America.